A. Now for today’s lesson from 1 John…
B. How many of you have heard about the book and movie called “The Secret”?
1. Here is some of the verbiage being used to advertise “The Secret”: “The Secret is released to the world! This ground-breaking feature length movie presentation reveals The Great Secret of the universe. It has been passed throughout the ages, traveling through centuries...to reach you and humankind. This is The Secret to everything - the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted. In this astonishing program are ALL the resources you will ever need to understand and live The Secret. For the first time in history, the world’s leading scientists, authors, and philosophers will reveal The Secret that utterly transformed the lives of every person who ever knew it...Plato, Newton, Carnegie, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein. Now YOU will know The Secret. And it could change your life forever.” (Makes you want to go right out and buy a copy. Right? Wrong!)
2. Here’s what Cynthia Black, President of Beyond Words Publishing says about the book: “The Secret is truly the most outstanding book to date that we have published. I am so pleased that Rhonda Byrne was able to bring together this life-changing information so masterfully. She first did it for the movie of the same name that she produced, which has been a phenomenon in its own right. She then added, in only ones month’s time, incredible additional content to the transcript of the film that brings even more clarity to the reader. This is absolutely a book that people from all walks of life can read and then "get" the concept of The Secret. It allows them to then take it and apply it to their lives. Children, teenagers and adults of all ages are reporting miraculous stories of positive changes as a result. Rhonda Byrne is dedicated to maintaining the integrity of The Secret and to making sure that now, finally, the whole world knows about The Secret. You will want to share this with your friends and family and they will be grateful for it. This book gives hope for what many have been waiting for-- a shift in the way the world thinks. Its a very exciting time that we are living in, and I as well as everyone at Beyond Words and Atria Books are grateful to be a part of it.”
3. The film has attracted considerable interest and acclaim from mega media figures such as Oprah Winfrey and Larry King.
4. Basically, the secret is the same old lie just repackaged. It is the lie that you can be your own god and control your destiny. If you can think it, then you can control it and do it.
C. What I want to proclaim to you today is that the book and movie The Secret, are not what we nor our world needs.
1. What is needed by all of us is what is found in today’s passage from 1 John.
2. The secret we need to learn is that God is love. That God loves us. And that we should love one another with God’s love.
3. That is the secret to abundant life, and it is actually no secret at all.
D. In today’s section from 1 John 4:7-21, John echoes ideas about love that are found elsewhere in this letter.
1. In 2:3-11, John introduced this subject and underscored the believer’s fidelity to “the light.” To love one’s fellow believer is to show that one lives “in the light.”
2. In 3:10-24, John explored practical applications of the love command and connected it to eternal life. To love is to prove that we have eternal life working in us.
3. In today’s section, John is concerned that we understand fully what inspires our love for one another.
E. For John, the life of a local church is a holy community in which the love of God is made real to its members and is essential to Christian orthodoxy.
1. The false teachers whom John was combating, were creating a following made up of people attracted to the world’s preoccupation with money, sex and power.
2. In contrast to that, John was appealing to those who loved the truth to embrace the lifestyle of love that would confirm their connection to God.
3. In today’s section, John explains that this command to love is traced to its very origin, which is the character and essence of God.
4. John claims that people who have been born of God are the only ones who can really understand the nature of self-giving love and practice it.
5. And they can do so only because they have seen it modeled perfectly in Christ, and because the Holy Spirit empowers them to love as Jesus did.
F. But here is the great challenge that faces humanity – so few of us know what real love is.
1. Early in our lives, we have experiences that have a profound effect on what will follow.
2. It is critical for a child to be loved in order to feel secure, to develop into a healthy person, and to know how to love.
3. Listen to this report from an article from USA Today (Sept. 10, 2003, p. 8D). The headline read, “Attachments key to improving kid’s lives.”
a. “There is a deep hunger within America’s children for something they don’t know they are missing: close attachments. That means a connectedness to people and to a sense of moral and spiritual meaning hard to find in today’s fast-paced society, says a report by the Commission on Children at Risk. It cites brain research indicating people are “hard-wired” for connection that can influence their well-being. The commission calls for increased “authoritative communities,” or “groups of people who are committed to one another over time and who model and pass on at least part of what it means to be a good person and live a good life.”
4. This is a concept that sounds simple and self-evident when put into words. Of course kids need this stuff, right?
5. Children need loving attachments to safe, nurturing people in order to develop properly.
6. They need the context of a stable, authoritative community in which they learn the parameters of their freedom.
7. They need teachers who pass along the received wisdom of the community about right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.
8. They need to experience authentic love in order to someday know how to love.
G. Sadly and unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen for children, does it?
1. Suppose a child is emotionally or verbally abused.
2. Perhaps he or she is physically or sexually abused.
3. Or maybe the child simply grows up in a sterile emotional environment where it’s “every man for himself,” or “Dog eat dog” or “as cold as ice.”
4. Pity that poor little boy or girl for the man or woman who will result! And for those who will have to interact with them socially or in families!
5. People cannot change their childhood. What happened or did not happen cannot be changed.
6. But what they can do is experience God in their adolescent or adult years, enter the safe and nurturing environment of a holy community of God, face up to the negative scripting they got as children, and begin to live as transformed children of God.
7. The gift of eternal life is God’s gift of newness, healing, and spiritual health here and now!
H. Look again at 1 John 4:7-12, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
1. The affirmation “love comes from God” could be literally translated “love is out of God” or paraphrased “love originates in and flows from God.”
2. Love is to God as light is to the sun.
3. John himself has introduced the light metaphor for God at 1:5 when he wrote: “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.”
4. Darkness doesn’t originate with God. Sin does not have its origin in him.
5. Neglect, abuse, and hatred are not part of his nature.
6. God can only act in ways that are consistent with his nature, and God’s nature is love.
7. So a community that does not live in, affirm, and share love does not belong to him. “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (4:8).
I. We’ve been told before that there are multiple words in the Greek language to express various dimensions of the sentiment we call love.
1. Neil Alexander summarizes the fundamental distinction among three of those words in a helpful way. “Eros is acquisitive love; it is the desire to possess and use – perhaps the desire for sex, money, truth, or power. Philia is the love of sisterhood and brotherhood; it is used of friendship that tends to be mutually beneficial and mutually satisfying. Agape is not so much an emotion of attraction, desire, or calculation of mutual benefit as it is an act of the will; it is a conscious decision to do what is in another’s best interest. They can be summarized concisely this way: eros is all take, philia is give and take, agape is all give.”
2. God alone has pure, self-giving love as the essence of his nature. God is Agape.
3. This sort of love, whenever and wherever practiced, has its origin with God.
4. His image and likeness are stamped on the human heart, and we occasionally see someone act with what we call altruism or true unselfishness – like a rescue worker rushing toward the Twin Towers on 9/11 rather than running away.
5. That spirit is within the human heart because we are created with the capacity to reflect his nature as our creator.
6. But the only one who can act in that spirit of self-giving love ,constantly and without exception, is God himself.
7. As an event, that love was exhibited in the life and atoning death of Jesus Christ (4:9-10); and as a process, it is to be carried from generation to generation through Christ’s people (4:11-12).
J. Many people have experienced “love” only as someone else’s desire to possess and use them; they have been manipulated, hurt, and abandoned in the name of love.
1. Others know “love” only in the sense of bartering; they have been taught to give of themselves only when they can be sure of getting something back.
2. And these wounded, jaded, sad people make up the vast majority of the population of our world and our church.
3. But, the church is supposed to be an alternative community of holy living in which people love one another as God has loved them.
4. When that goal is achieved, “God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (4:12b). Amazing!
5. To say that God’s love is perfected in us simply means that the love Christians learn to show one another in community is really God’s own love flowing through us.
6. And that community becomes a proof to the world that God’s love is real.
7. People who did not experience care, nurture, and protection in other communities (i.e., family, neighborhood, school) are supposed to discover it in this community (i.e., the church).
K. And this perfect love of God casts out fear.
1. John believed that the love of God is the most powerful motivation to righteous, holy living that exists.
2. Let’s read again 1 John 4:13-21, “We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
3. The fundamental message of the gospel is not that Christ saves from hell but that he embodies the Father’s love.
4. The driving force for new life in Christ is not the fear of hell but the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.
5. And the sustaining power for faithfulness until Christ’s return is not the fear of judgment but the assurance and boldness that result from living in a supportive community of authentic Christian love, the church family.
L. One person explained it like this: “To me, it is more important to be loved than to love. When I have not had the experience of being loved by God, just as I am and not as I should be, then loving others becomes a duty, a responsibility, a chore. But if I let myself be loved as I am, with the love of God poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit, then I can reach out to others in a more effortless way” (Brennan Manning).
1. Maybe that is the problem with the spiritual life of some of us!
2. We have not heard, been educated in, and had modeled for us the gospel as grace and love.
3. We know it only as guilt and shame.
4. We experience it as judgment and we receive it as rescue from hell.
5. But that’s not the gospel.
6. The gospel is the message that love became a baby at Bethlehem, that God became defenseless before evil, and that the atonement has been secured by the self-giving love of the cross!
7. Yes, certainly to save us from hell, but also for so much more!
M. The church is the place where God’s children tell the story of Christ, a place where they affirm the reality of God’s love, and learn how to pay attention to one another in love.
1. After all, to “love the whole world” or to “love my (faceless) neighbor as myself” can be nothing more than pious profession.
2. In the church we rub elbows with real people, we notice their shortcomings, we pay attention to the hurts and needs of these imperfect people, and we allow God to perfect his love in us by teaching us to deal with one another in love.
3. The church is where God reassures me that I am loved securely enough that I can take the risk of loving you.
4. And that is His message for us all.
5. And that is the truth that makes all the difference in the world – God is love. God loves us and we must love one another with His love.
6. People who have been loved as much as Christians should know how to love one another.
7. That is the secret to joy, peace and life.
8. That’s what it means to walk in the light.
9. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.” (1 John 4:7a)
10. Let’s lose ourselves in His love, as we pass that love on to others.
(Resources for this lesson include: The NIV Application Commentary,and “Life in God’s New Community,” Rubel Shelly)
